D’Inghilterra

An old palazzon town house of the Torlonia princes from the 17th century; and from the mid 19th one of the most exclusive hotels in Rome.The atmosphere of a private aristocratic residence has always appealed to intellectuals, artists and celebrities the world over. It opened as Hotel d Angleterre The building, which dates from the middle of the 16th century, was originally the guest house of the Palace of the Torlonia Princes, across the way. The piazza was used as a parking area for carriages, which were washed with the water of the fountain. At the time, the City's guest structures were located in this quarter, inhabited primarily by foreigners. In fact, Via Borgognona was named after a colony of residents from Burgoyne, in France, who had arrived in the early 1400s. Travellers reached Rome in carriages along the Via Cassia and the Via Flaminia, passing through the Porta del Popolo gate, where the Hotel de Russie stood. Only later, with the development of railways, did hotels move towards the area of the present-day Termini Station. In the 19th century the increased construction activity favoured by Pope Pious IX produced radical changes in the entire neighbourhood. In 1845 the building was earmarked for use as a hotel under the name of Hotel d'Angleterre, explained by the fact that the English poet Keats, who lived in the Piazza di Spagna, had gathered a large number of his fellow Englishmen around him. One of the first important figures to stay in the new hotel, then considered ultra-modern because each room had a fireplace, was Vincenzo Gioberti, who, in 1848, spoke to the Roman people from one of the widows, urging them to join in the fight for independence. A plaque at the entrance commemorates an historic visit of 2 July 1855 by Pope Pious IX, a unique instance of a Pope leaving the Vatican, in order to meet “His Most Religious Majesty, Don Pietro V, King of Portugal;. Another plaque refers to the stay of Enrico Sienkiewicz, author of the famous novel Quo Vadis, in 1893. The hotel was soon considered fashionable, a favourite site of nobles and high society, and then of D'Annunzio's Rome, which centred around the Via Condotti, the Piazza di Spagna and the Via Bocca di Leone. Countless illustrious guests have stayed here in the last century and a half: Franz Listz, Hans Christian Andersen, Henry James, Ernest Hemingway and Mark Twain, up to the recent visit by Prince Philip of Edinburgh, who signed the Gold Register to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Hotel d'Inghilterra. The hotel's logo is patterned after the crest of the English Royal Family, demonstrating the centuries-long ties with the crown of the Windsors.